Intel and Nokia Get ‘Cute’ With Mobile Software

When executives from Intel and Nokia took the stage in Barcelona Monday to explain their latest joint effort, both sides hastened to say they wanted to avoid the “f-word.” That’s “f” as in “fragmentation.”

Associated Press

Nokia’s Kai Oistamo, right, and Intel’s Renee James during the MeeGo presentation at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

The term arises because the world of operating systems for cellphones is extremely complicated and seems to be getting more so, not like the neat world of PCs where Microsoft’s Windows dominates. In smart phones, programmers have many potential targets for their application-development efforts.

There’s Apple’s hot iPhone, which has its own operating system and a vast array of apps. Google, meanwhile, not only has its Linux-based Android operating system for cellphones but is promising to develop what it calls Chrome OS for broader applications.

Microsoft’s Windows, despite tepid reviews, has a measurable chunk of the market. Research In Motion is trying to build a software community around its popular BlackBerry, as is Palm for its Pre and Pixi smart phones. Chip maker Qualcomm has its BREW “operating environment,” another target for developers. Sun Microsystems, now part of Oracle, still distributes a lot of its Java programming code on phones.

Where do Nokia and Intel fit in? The Finnish cellphone giant uses the Symbian operating system for nearly all of its phones now, but had developed a Linux-based option called Maemo for higher-end applications. Intel, meanwhile, had developed a variant of its own called Moblin to work with its x86 chips (most other software runs on chips from ARM Holdings).

If one assumes that Apple, Google and Microsoft all remain big players, Intel and Nokia faced the prospect of fighting over which operating system would be No. 4, at best, in the high-end space. So it’s not all that surprising that they decided to merge Moblin and Maemo to create MeeGo, which will become their best hope to create a viable ecosystem of developers.

In announcing plans Monday for MeeGo–which runs on both x86 and ARM chips–Intel and Nokia plan to exploit a Nokia-owned set of tools for creating applications called Qt–pronounced “cute”–that will be modified to generate applications that not only work on MeeGo but on Symbian devices as well.

“People will be able to keep their favorite applications whenever they change devices,” said Kai Oistamo, Nokia’s executive vice president for devices, during a press event at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, where the MeeGo effort was unveiled.

That’s a bit of an overstatement. If you wrote an application to run on an ARM chip, a developer most likely would have to run a process called recompilation to create a version that would run on a device using an x86 microprocessor, noted Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, which will help oversee MeeGo’s development, as it had Moblin’s.

Still, the work for developers should be a lot less, Zemlin said. He noted that Intel and Nokia see MeeGo as not at all limited to smartphones, but to be a platform for creating applications for netbook-style PCs, TVs, cars and other products. “They are thinking about this as a platform for things people haven’t even dreamed of yet,” Zemlin said.

Indeed, Nokia seemed very shy about using the term phone anywhere close to the word MeeGo; the companies’ news release instead speaks of “pocketable mobile computers.” Oistamo said MeeGo will “coexist” with Symbian.

Nokia, surprisingly, also did not shed much light on if or when it might use an x86 chip from Intel in a cellphone, a major issue for the Silicon Valley giant’s future growth. But there was some body language from the Finnish company.

Asked about that issue in Barcelona, Oistamo said “Nokia’s hardware strategy is that we’re working with the best partners,” while looking at Renee James, the Intel senior vice president who joined him on stage. “It’s natural for us to pick the best partners.”